


Til the Wheels Come Off

by Nevcolleil



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, M/M, highlander!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:21:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28420860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevcolleil/pseuds/Nevcolleil
Summary: A collection of short stories.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

They still celebrated Christmas the way Dad used to do. Dean found a real tree, and Sam decorated it with ornaments and lights they bought new every year. They ate out on Christmas Eve when they were in a city where there were decent restaurants open in the evening. When they weren’t, and they could manage it, they cooked a real Christmas meal. Turkey and dressing with cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie and green bean casserole… The only trimming they left out was the candied yams, because Dean had a strange and as-yet-unexplained aversion to sweet potatoes.

The annual Winchester Christmas gift exchange was normally a fiasco.

Dean could be, when he wanted, a very intuitive gift-giver. What he gave, he gave from the heart. And he had a surprisingly sentimental heart beneath all his blustering about “chick flick” moments and girly displays of affection.

But Dean’s intuition only ever lasted half-way through his Christmas shopping. After that, there was no telling what he might spend his money on. Several of the presents he bought for Sam were… Well. Sam couldn’t call them gag gifts. The sad thing was that Dean had actually been serious when he’d bought them.

“Dean.”

“What?”

“I’m not wearing this.”

Dean looked up from the new scabbard Sam had given him for his favorite sword. He saw what Sam had pulled from the pile of torn wrapping paper and open packaging in his lap. Dean grinned and winked.

“Not alone you’re not. I got one, too. Mine’s black.”

Of course. Sam snorted.

“I’m not wearing it, period. Dean, I’m not eighteen anymore. I can’t wear…this in public. I’d look-”

“Incredibly hot?”

The guilelessness in Dean’s expression softened Sam’s glare only a little.

“Ridiculous,” Sam corrected. He dropped the filmy, red shirt Dean had bought him back into its box. And sighed. They’d had this discussion before. He’d asked this same question. But Dean had avoided it, as he always did the issues created by his Immortality - and Sam’s more than obvious mortality.

“Don’t you think it would be less awkward when we went out together, if you didn’t insist on flaunting our…unique… relationship?”

Dean set down his sword and scabbard and gave a sigh to rival Sam’s own. He leaned forward in his seat, elbows on his knees. Sam recognized his expression as being the telling-Sammy-how-it-is one.

Sam wondered when he’d stopped being offended by the notion. And had started simply sitting back and waiting, amused, for what would come out of Dean’s mouth next.

“Sammy. You know me. What I got? I flaunt. And what I’ve got is one sexy Baby Brother. Who, lucky for me, is only my brother in the figurative sense.”

“That doesn’t make it less creepy when you call me that, you know.”

Dean grinned. Moving from his chair, and across the rug between them, to press his lips to Sam’s. Sam felt Dean’s smile relax into their kiss. Dean’s fingers traced the edge of Sam’s jaw, the shell of his ears. A sigh escaped him as Dean pulled back.

Dean just looked at him. Sam knew what he saw. And he wondered how Dean did it. How he looked and saw but didn’t see the first beginnings of lines at the corners of Sam’s eyes and mouth. The gray that hadn’t yet streaked Sam’s temples, but would soon enough. Sam was Dean’s “Baby Brother” in their minds only. No one could look at them and not mistake Sam for the elder of the two. It had been over ten years since Dean’s first “death”. Dean still looked - and would eternally look - twenty-something years old. Sam was thirty-four. The differences weren’t glaring…yet. But they did exist. And one day-

“Hey.” Dean recaptured his attention, face uncharacteristically serious. “Doesn’t make it less true, either. I am one lucky bastard, Sam, don’t think I don’t know it. You oughtta know it, too.”

Sam shook his head, the smile forming itself on his lips. Lucky. Dean was blessed. Sam couldn’t listen to those words, look into those eyes, and not love the man. Sam didn’t know who could.

“Besides, the shirt looks different on its own. Put it on with the leathers and that will look hot.”

Sam blinked. He glanced at the unopened package at his side.

“What?”

Dean grinned.


	2. Resistant

"Damn it."

Sam was doing - he thought - an honorable job of ignoring the muttered curses coming from his brother; the sound of Dean sucking yet another wounded digit into his mouth.

The fourth time it happened, Sam couldn't keep quiet any longer.

"Would you quit that already?"

Dean threw Sam a wounded look in the near-darkness of the hallway in which they stood.

"You try hiding one of these bad boys under an itty bitty coat." The blade of Dean's sword flashed as Dean moved it out from under the cover of his new duster, and into the beam of Sam's flashlight. "It's not like I'm hacking myself to pieces on purpose. Jeez."

Sam rolled his eyes. But he paused, turning to Dean. "It's not an itty bitty coat. Dick Tracy wore a shorter coat than you."

"Hey."

"And you aren't hacking anything to pieces," Sam continued, but grabbed Dean's wrist. "Let me see that."

At once, Sam realized his mistake. Dean's grin practically glowed, even with Sam's flashlight pointed away from his face.

"What? You wanna play the older brother for a change? Gonna kiss my boo-boo and make it better?"

Sam pinned Dean with an unamused gaze. And pinned him with the beam of his flashlight when that didn't have an effect.

"Ow. Watch it with that thing, would ya?" Dean turned and squinted his eyes. Satisfied that his brother had, indeed, only knicked himself with his sword - and not "hacked" off a finger - Sam released Dean's wrist.

"You've never kissed my "boo-boos" to make them better."

"You saying you want me to?"

Sam started on again, not dignifying Dean's remark with an answer.

"Coz we could talk about it, bro. I mean, this whole Immortal thing makes the brothers-shouldn't-kiss issue kind of a moot point for us."

Sam stopped again. "Shut. Up. Dean. I can't believe you're talking about- We're supposed to be looking for a skinwalker."

Dean rocked back on his heels, smiling. "We haven't found him yet. We can't talk while we look?"

Sam sighed and shook his head. They'd been talking about...that... an awful lot lately. In fact, every conversation - or psuedoconversation - between them inevitably veered towards that topic. It wasn't that Sam was entirely resistant to the idea... He was maybe a little bit bothered that he wasn't resistant enough. As in not at all. And the more Dean talked about it, the less Sam wanted to talk about it so much as-

"So... The next time you get a boo-boo, you don't want me to kiss it better. Is that what you're saying?"

"Stop calling them boo-boos!"

"Not that you have to get hurt for me to want to kiss you, Sammy, but-"

Sam stopped in the middle of the hallway, turned to Dean before Dean could react, and pressed him - hard - up against the nearest wall.

Then he pressed his lips to Dean's. And kept pressing until both their mouths had parted and suddenly their tongues were sliding against one another the way Sam had been wanting them to do for some time now.

When Sam drew back his mind stayed in the kiss for a moment. Then other thoughts caught up with him.

"Fuck."

"Yeah." Dean swallowed. His voice was unusually soft and uneven. It made Sam smile in spite of himself. And then wince. "And about time." Of course, it was possible that Dean really had forgotten where they were. His lips brushed the curve of Sam's jaw.

"No, I mean-" Sam held up his bloody hand, sheepish. "I cut myself on your sword."

Dean chuckled. Sam did, too. "Shut up. It's not-" His words faded as Dean's lips closed around the tip of his index finger.

Moments passed, feeling much longer than they should. Dean wasn't chuckling any longer when he let Sam's finger loose. Neither was Sam.

"There. Better?"

"Actually, the cut is more on-"

"Yeah. But it wouldn't have been as sexy if I'd sucked on your palm."

Sam snorted. "Skinwalker, Dean."

"And we pick this back up afterward?"

"Definitely."


	3. Distance

Sam kept half his thoughts on the gravel skidding beneath his feet as he half-dragged his brother to the Impala. He kept the other half on the demon still thrashing somewhere in the distance, down but not dead. He and Dean were both soaking wet from their little dip in the flat-bottom creek that ran through the center of these Virginian woods.

When Sam reached the car, he yanked the passenger door open and tried to ease Dean down onto the front seat. Dean collapsed heavily, instead, hissing weakly through his front teeth.

"Shit. Just hold on, we'll-"

Sam didn't finish. He slammed the door shut with shaking fingers and thought of anything but the red tint to the mudtracks he and Dean had left behind on the cracked pavement of the service road they'd parked beside.

"Hu-"

Dean could barely speak. Sam went through the motions of starting the car, pulling out onto the road, hitting the gas - too hard - without paying attention to anything.

"Just hold on, Dean. Just-" '-hold on, please, hold on...'

Dean slumped against the door at his side. Sam couldn't look at him. Sam had to look at him.

Barely a mile onto the highway, Sam broke down - shaking now so violently he had to put effort into keeping his foot on the accelerator.

"Oh, God."

Dean's head had lolled back against the headrest. His arms lay limp at his sides. The three, long gashes in his torso gaped at Sam through Dean's torn clothing, impossibly wide. Dean's skin was pale, and his eyes were open (but closed) and Sam's teeth weren't chattering because he was wet and cold.

Sam jerked the Impala off the shoulder and, somehow, managed to bring it to a skidding stop before he killed them bo-

Sam stumbled out of the car and vomited.

Sam didn't move for a long time, crouched low in the grass, with the Impala - driver side door still open - at his back as he sobbed.

All in all, it was everything Dean might have wanted in a death scene. Minus a few explosions, and with bloodstains on the Impala's leather seats and Sam weeping rather than some pretty girl in a tight, black dress.

Good thing that, so far as death scenes went, Dean's didn't last long.

Sam heard it almost immediately. A soft rasp of uneven breathing where there'd been silence before. Sam was in that place that comes after numbness. Where everything is overly sharp but strangely distant and even the chirp of a cricket seems too real, too loud. Sam's head was throbbing and he didn't know how long he'd been sitting there, against the bumper of the Impala, head hung between his bent knees.

It occured to Sam that it could be the Grundnakt demon, come after him. Though he wouldn't have thought the creature would wander so far from the safety of its wood, even in pursuit of wounded prey.

Sam didn't move.

Sam thought it could be something much more common. Or more common for normal people. A stray dog. A wolf, perhaps. Sam tried to remember what kind of wildlife lived in this area, but couldn't. He still didn't move.

Sam realized the sound was coming from inside the Impala, not nearby it, and scrambled to his feet. Then his knees almost gave out. And not because Sam had been sitting on the ground so long the sun was going down.

In the dusk, Sam stared through the windshield of the Impala.

And Dean stared back at him.

Dean spoke first, licking his dry lips. "What the fuck just happened?"

Sam only stared. He trembled.

"Sammy?"

Sam hesitated before forcing his feet to take the first, few steps around the front of the car to his open door. He ducked down and looked through it. Dean was sitting up, no longer looking at him.

Instead, he was staring down at his body. And the black-red blood that had dyed his clothing and the deep, ugly ga-

The deep, ugly gashes the Grundnakt's claws had made in Dean's body, but which seemed to have...disappeared.

"D- Dean?"

Dean was so still. So unnaturally still.

He turned towards Sammy slowly. Sam barely breathed.

"Dude. If you let me come back from the dead as a freakin' zombie, I'm kicking your ass."

The little man in the motel room's office looked at Sam strangely when he went in and rented the room. No more strangely than motel management ever did when Sam and Dean showed up at strange hours of the night and paid with wads of cash. This time the attendant had even more reason to stare at Sam than usual. Sam was wet and bloody and - he realized too late - he probably should have changed his clothes before pulling into the motel's drive. Sam caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the glass behind the check in counter and winced. He looked like a cross between a serial killer and a drowned rat.

The attendant gave Sam a set of keys, though, without many words. And Sam didn't linger in the office waiting for any. He pulled the car around to the other side of the lot, where their room was, and ran around the car to help Dean out.

"I can do it," Dean insisted when Sam took his arm. He didn't try to shrug Sam off, though, when Sam didn't back away.

They were both quiet while they had other things to focus on. Sam showered and changed while Dean lay on one of the room's two beds with his arm flung over his eyes. Then Sam got a clean set of clothes and Dean's bag out of the car so Dean could shower, as well. Dean was feeling enough like himself to quip, "Much as I love you, bro, I hope you aren't planning to hold the soap for me, too."

Sam smirked. But his expression faltered when the bathroom door closed. Sam pulled out Dad's journal and started flipping through it right away, to calm himself before Dean got finished.

"Well, you're not a vampire."

"No shit, Sherlock."

"I didn't reanimate you."

"Yeah. You probably would've botched that up."

"Only on purpose."

It was surprisingly easy to slip back into routine. As if Sam hadn't spent all evening sitting in the dirt, in the middle of nowhere, with his brother's car and his brother's (supposed) corpse.

"It couldn't be-"

"What?"

Dean shook his head, looking uncomfortable. Well. Uncomfortable-er. Coming back from the dead, Sam would imagine, had to be pretty damn uncomfortable.

"Nah. It's stupid."

"We're running out of smart at this point, Dean. Stupid's better than nothing."

"Says you." But Dean reached for the journal and took it from Sam's hands. "Let's see..."

Dean flipped through the journal shortly, as Sam watched him fumble with the pages. It occurred to Sam that maybe slipping back into routine was easier for Dean, too. He was just working up the nerve to say something about it when Dean's page-fumbling stopped.

"Here."

Sam looked over the page Dean had turned to. He shifted the journal so he could read it, eyebrows rising once he had.

"I told you it was stupid."

"Immortal?"

“I’m not dead. I’m not undead. Only other time I’ve seen anything like this was in ‘92. Remember that antique store owner in Washington?”

Sam didn’t remember. In ‘92 he’d been nine years old. And still fascinated enough by the “family business” that hunting trips were like little adventures. He hadn't taken many details away from any of them. Only vague memories of how excited he'd felt in the middle of chasing this demon, or exorcising that spirit. Sam looked to the journal. "Tessa Noel?"

"We were in Seacouver hunting gremlins. Dad saved her and her friend from a mugging. Dad thought her husband looked familiar, but he couldn't figure out why. Did a little research, found out-"

"He was an Immortal," Sam read from their father's notes. "Born in Scotland in...1592. I can't believe this is for real."

"Believe it. Dad left us back at the hotel that night, but he said another Immortal challenged the first Immortal for a Quickening with him right there."

A Quickening. Sam frowned at the word and looked for it in the journal. He didn't like what he found.

"A Quickening. One Immortal absorbs another Immortal's powers and knowledge by beheading- If you're one of these Immortals...does that mean other Immortals are gonna come challenging you?"

Dean's answer came to Sam in his hesitation, for a moment after Sam had finished speaking. Then Dean shrugged. He said, quietly, "Not like I needed the extra enemies, huh?

"They aren't all like that, though. Dad seemed to think that guy in Washington was pretty cool. If he's still around we should probably look him up. He can tell us if this is the real deal or-"

"Or what?"

"Or we'll figure that out when we have to."

Sam dropped their father's journal onto the tabletop between himself and Dean. Crude sketches of swords and Dad's speculations about Immortal origins and codes of honor stretched across the open pages.

Sam reached for his laptop.

"You think 413 year-old Scotsmen keep driver's licenses? I could look him up through the DMV."

Dean leaned back in his chair.

"It's worth a shot. Did Dad write down his name?"

It was written in ink along the margin of one of the journal pages.

"Duncan McLeod," Sam said. He booted up and started the search.


End file.
